A new one from Germany

[hagen von tronje]

The steamer “Nordland” is a very rare model. Made by Hans-Juergen Krueger, it has been constructed by hand, therefore it is much lesser detailed than other constructions made with the help of computers. And there are some typical features of hand-drawn models – but no other publisher will ever offer a model of this unkown ship, therefore I built the “Nordland” in spite of the disadvantages of hand-drawn models.

The Steamer was built in 1924 by Vulkan in Stettin. The „Nordland“ was used for freight and passenger transport in the Baltic. During WW II she was a submarine tender for the German “Kriegsmarine” and had to be delivered to the USSR after the end of the war. In 1966 she was scrapped in Denmark.

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Besides fleet mine sweepers the German “Kriegsmarine” used smaller coastal mine sweepers, the so-called “Raeumboote”. One of the first classes of those coastal mine sweepers were the boats “R 17”, “R 18”, “R 19” and “R 20”. Back in the fifties “Wilhelmshavener Modellbaubogen” (now Moewe-Verlag) published a very simple model of that mine sweeper class. By using about 105 scratch built parts I tried to give the small model a more realistic appearance.

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The next one is a model of a Koni-class frigate – a ship, built in the USSR, which was in service for the former East German Navy, the “Volksmarine”, too. This model of an East German Koni was published by MDK-Verlag, Germany. The models of this publisher have limited details, but quite good graphics. They can be easily built by beginners, but have a great potential to be highly detailed by creative modelers.

From 1978 on the East German “Volksmarine” replaced the out-dated frigates of the Riga-class by the Konis. Three ships were bought from the USSR; they got the names “Rostock”, “Berlin – Hauptstadt der DDR” and “Halle”. They were commissioned in 1978,1979 and 1986. After the fall of the Wall and the reunification of West and East Germany two of them where shortly used by the German Navy for testing purposes.


The fourth picture is my "photoshopped" Koni model in the Baltic....

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And the last one for today is a model of the heavy cruiser “Hipper” of the German “Kriegsmarine”. This was an old card model of “Wilhelmshavener Modellbaubogen” (now Moewe-Verlag), too. When I built the cruiser in 2006, that highly detailed model of GPM did not yet exist; therefore if you wanted to have a heavy cruiser of the Hipper class at that time, you had to build that old model from Moewe-Verlag, which was not very detailed. Apart from that there were some construction faults, which had to be corrected, too. I used some 720 parts from the original sheets and improved the model by 1388 parts, which were scratch built or laser parts.

The German “Kriegsmarine” had three of those heavy cruisers – “Hipper”, “Bluecher” and “Prinz Eugen”. “Bluecher” was sunk by Norwegian coastal batteries in May 1940 in the Oslo Fjord, when the “Kriegsmarine” invaded Norway. “Hipper” took part in several operations in the North Sea, the Atlantic and the Northern Polar Sea. In December 1942 she was severely hit in the boiler rooms by British cruisers when attacking an allied convoy to Russia. Back in Germany she was decommissioned in February 1943. Never fully repaired, she was re-commissioned again as a cadet training ship in March 1944 and operated in the Baltic Sea. At a docking period in Kiel in February 1945 she was hit by British bombers. Finally she was blown up by her crew in the dockyard at the end of the war.
The only heavy cruiser of that class to survive WW II was “Prinz Eugen”, which was handed over to the US and used as a target for nuclear testings at the Bikini Atoll.


And again I put my cruiser into a little bit more realistic scene in picture four.


To be continued...


Greetings
Hagen

[Royaloakmin]

Good to see old friends.

[sharunas]

Again, great collection!

Question: how you make wave imitation in photos? Do you put image of a model on picture of other vessel?

[hagen von tronje]

@Royaloakmin
Hope those pictures arent't too boring for you, Fred... :-)

@sharunas
Yes, you're right. I usually take a picture with another ship and replace it by my card model. Then I place a copy of the waves over the imbedded card model, so that it seems to swim in the water. Sometimes the waves are improved by white colour spray using photoshop or photo impact.

Greetings
Hagen

[hagen von tronje]

Well - the next for models which I built some years ago...

The first one is the Rotor Ship “Barbara”:
Such a rotor ship is a really strange construction – Wiki explains as follows:
A rotor ship, or Flettner ship, is a ship designed to use the Magnus effect for propulsion. To take advantage of this effect, it uses rotorsails which are powered by an engine. The Magnus effect is a force acting on a spinning body in a moving airstream, which acts perpendicularly to the direction of the airstream. German engineer Anton Flettner was the first to build a ship which attempted to tap this force for propulsion.

“Barbara” was built in 1926 at the Weser AG, Bremen (Germany) to prove the usefulness of those Flettner rotors. She had three rotors to assist the two engines and was used by the Robert Sloman Shipping Line, Hamburg (Germany), providing regular services to the Mediterranean Sea.

In 1933 she was rebuilt losing her rotors and sailed as “Birkenau” After WW II she was handed over to Denmark, rebuilt again and used as a freighter named “Else Skau”. After that there were some other changes of ownership until she was removed from the Lloyds register in 1978.

Some years ago there were again trials with such ships – you may find more information about that at Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotor_ship)

Here some pictures of my “Barbara” model (published by “Moewe Verlag”, Wilhelmshaven, Germany; scale 1:250).

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The next one is the sub hunter / torpedo recovery vessel “Thetis”

The ships of the “Thetis” class were built for the Bundesmarine (former West German Navy) as as torpedo recovery vessels.

From 1961 on five torpedo recovery vessels of this class were commissioned. They had to pick up launched training torpedoes by a crane. But they had ASW equipment, too, so they could act as sub hunters in the event of war. Because they were not quite useful as torpedo recovery vessels, they were use as training ships from 1969 to 1974, after that they acted as sub hunters. After 1990 they were decommissioned and handed over to the Greece navy.

Here some pictures of my “Thetis” model (published by “Moewe Verlag”, Wilhelmshaven, Germany; scale 1:250).

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Fast patrol boat S 141 “Tiger”

The first fast patrol boat classes built for the Bundesmarine (former West German Navy) were equipped with torpedoes. But the success of an Egyptian missile boat (Soviet Komar class) which killed the Israeli destroyer “Eilath” in 1967, proved, that the torpedo armament of the German boats was no longer effective enough to defend the Baltic Approaches against the Soviet Red Fleet in case of war.

Therefore the Bundesmarine ordered some twenty missile boats of the French type “La Combattante II”, which were equipped with the quite effective Exocet missile system. These boats (referred to as class 148) were commissioned from 1972 on. They were used some thirty years and were finally decommissioned in 2002. The boats were handed over to other navies (e.g. Chile, Greece and Egypt).

S 141 “Tiger” remained in service from 1972 until 1998 and was finally handed over to the Greek navy. The model was published by “Moewe Verlag”, Wilhelmshaven, Germany (scale 1:250)